Hey, kids, here’s some advice from your grandfolks on avoiding the draft.
Roberta Price’s Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture alibi . december 16 – 22, 2004
Joe, a friend from Yale got out of the draft by meditating and getting his blood pressure down below the minimum. Danny smoked cigarettes and drank so much coffee in the twenty-four hours before his physical that his blood pressure twitched above the maximum. Tom, who’s six feet tall, fasted, lost fifty pounds, and got his weight down below the minimum for his height, one hundred and thirty four, for two different physicals. The second time, they said, “You’re not going to go, are you?” Archer got FUCK YOU tattooed on the side of his right hand, the part that faces out when he salutes, and they didn’t want him, though after that another guy got his hand tattooed the same way and was drafted. A guy from Harvard acted crazy and got himself chased into the bathroom, where he secretly slipped two unwrapped Baby Ruths into the toilet bowl. When they caught up with him and tried to restrain him, he scooped up the candy bars, which were sitting in the toilet like turds, and ate them. I’ve heard that some men drink egg whites, hoping they’ll increase the albumin level in their urine and get classified 4-F for diabetes. Todd didn’t go to his physical, and he’s somewhere in the Sierras in Northern California the last we heard. Brian didn’t go to his either. He’s probably in Mexico. A friend from Columbia took three tabs of White Lightning the morning of his physical. He hallucinated and yelled gibberish throughout his processing, but he got inducted anyway. A friend of a friend at Buffalo shot off his big toe the night before his physical, like a wolf that gnaws off his paw to get out of a trap. …
He counted to ten before answering any question the captain asked, to suggest that maybe he wasn’t a good candidate for following orders promptly, but he was getting nowhere until he played his last card.
“What makes you think you’re unsuitable for Vietnam?” sneered the captain, looking across his desk at David in his underwear.
“I think I’d have a tendency to shoot my officers in the back, sir,” David said.
Keep in mind Malcolm X’s strategy. He told his draft board he was looking forward to learning how to use a gun and kill so he could come home and start a race war. mjh